From: US Taxpayers Party

Subject: Declaration of Candidacy For Michigan US Senate

My name is Bret Lee McAtee and as one speaking to my fellow citizens of Michigan and to friends who live outside the great state that is my home, I am today formally declaring my candidacy to represent Michigan in the Senate of these United States of America. I intend to run for that office on the U.S. Taxpayers Party ticket, which is the Michigan affiliate of the Constitution Party.

Some of my close confidants have asked me why a minister would want to enter into this senatorial race. The answer is that I desire, with this candidacy, to bear testimony to future generations, render respect to past generations, and to provide challenge to our present generation.

I believe there is a need to bear testimony to future generations by being one of many who seeks to ring the tocsin to awaken a slumbering and benumbed people from their religious, political and moral torpor. Future generations, in order to establish their own moral bearings, will need examples of very ordinary men risking much to protect the inheritance of the constitutional republic that was passed on to us by our Founding Fathers. These earlier Fathers, by their actions, bore their own testimony to future generations and in doing so risked all and so provided examples for us, their future seed. The bearing of testimony to future generations by those honored and now long dead, secured for many generations the privileges of life, liberty and property. It is fitting and proper that we honor our Fathers, who bore testimony to us by their actions, by turning, and bearing testimony to future generations with actions that in some small measure reflect the testimony of those greater and more faithful Fathers.

I run for US Senate, in part, to communicate to my children and our children and generations yet unborn that there are never odds so long, nor challenges so large, nor wrongs so firmly established that excuse us from being faithful to the God of our Fathers. This God who animates us now is the God who animated so many of our Fathers before us and crafted them into the faithful men they were. So I run to bear testimony to the unborn who, though now only prospective members of the community, still require faithfulness on our part to them, just as our Fathers were faithful to us when our part of the community was yet only prospective.

I also am running for the US Senate seat in order to render respect to the wisdom of past generations. It seems that there is little concern in Washington for the constitutional government that was bequeathed to us by those who intended for the Constitution to be taken seriously. The politicians of our times are unlike such men as Thomas Jefferson who could say in reference to the Constitution:

“It would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights… Confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism. Free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence. It is jealousy and not confidence which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power… Our Constitution has accordingly fixed the limits to which, and no further, our confidence may go… In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.”

Elected officials from the two major parties are drunk with power and ignore the Constitution at every turn. This is seen in their making policy in areas that are constitutionally forbidden them and in a taxation policy that is confiscatory. Their being drunk with power is seen in how they completely ignore the 9th and 10th amendments to the Constitution, and in their refusal to stop the ethnocide that is abortion. That the intoxicating effect of power has gone to their heads is seen in their refusal to protect free speech as seen in their passing of the Campaign Finance Reform bill, and in their constant meddling with our 2nd amendment rights. Their drunkenness has made them unwatchful and irresponsible as seen in their refusal to craft a sane immigration policy and their unwillingness to be honest with us regarding the soundness of our fiscal house. Their inebriated state has made them unable both to speak boldly against the turning of the American Republic into an empire, where perpetual war is waged for perpetual peace, and to protest manfully the exportation of our manufacturing base overseas. My fellow citizens of Michigan, we must realize that these politicians who are drunk with power are like any other drunkard. They will not stop with their erratic and drunken behavior until someone takes the bottle from them. A vote for McAtee for US Senate will help remove one of those power drunk politicians from office thus beginning to restore political and cultural sobriety.

But in all honesty my fellow citizens, our situation is not completely the fault of power drunk politicians, for we citizens are the ones who are responsible for no longer rendering respect to the wisdom of our Fathers when it comes to binding men down with the chains of the Constitution. We have chosen not to render respect to the wisdom of our Fathers who spoke to us of limited, decentralized and diffused government preferring instead unlimited, centralized and concentrated government, and in doing so we have taken the chains that Jefferson said should be applied to bureaucrats and apparatchiks and instead, by our voting habits, have fitted those chains to our own ankles and wrists so that we are slaves bound to the whims of our governmental taskmasters. This is not the way of a free people.

We have known the ways of the two major parties for too long and yet we have, by our votes, continued to play the confident bartender to their power drunken ways. We have known of the despotic tendencies of Republicans and Democrats alike and yet, when entering into the voting booth and pulling levers for them, we serve up yet another round of rotgut to their pleasure and to the harm of our children and us. It is time for the co-dependency of the American voter to stop. A vote for McAtee for Senate in November of 2006 is one small step in seeing it stop.

Finally, I am running for Senate in 2006 in order to challenge the present generation. My challenge is simple and direct. My challenge to my generation is to move away from our collective self-centeredness. This generational self-centeredness shows itself in our disregard for our future and disrespect for our past. When we as voters demand from the government that they take care of us at the cost of putting our posterity in debt, we are self-centered. When we as voters do not demand to put an end to the scourge of abortion and then sanction cannibalizing the unborn for the sake of the aged, we are self-centered. This self-centeredness is criminal, and any parent who would treat his own offspring the way we have treated our posterity as a whole would be jailed for child abuse. If it is true that we will reap what we sow, I shudder to think what is in store for us because of our self-centeredness in reference to our children.

Finally, that our self-centeredness is disrespect to the past is seen in our abysmal lack of knowledge regarding who we are as a people. Too often, we care only about the here and the now and as such we have ripped up the legal, societal, and cultural boundary markers of our Fathers without even trying to understand that the reason our Fathers put them there was in order to protect us.

So, in this campaign, I intend to challenge the present generation by holding before them their responsibility to those now dead and those yet unborn. I intend to expose the inter-generational covenant that every society has and to ask the voters, if, in our times, we are holding up our God given covenantal responsibilities to our grandfathers and to our grandchildren.

Voters of Michigan, I believe the hour may be late and that we are in the waning phases of one of the greatest contests in our history. This contest is between those who would chain down elected officials with the Constitution against despotic elected officials who would chain down the liberty of Americans. It is a contest that will determine for years whether we will be ruled by the reality of transcendent law or ruled by the corruption of fallen men. It is a contest that must end in either government being our servant or government being our master.

If elected I can only promise you the satisfaction that comes from electing somebody who intends to take the Constitution seriously, and the pouring out of scorn that will come from people who think such a mindset is antiquarian, anachronistic, and archaic.

I cannot and will not offer financial plums to various interest groups. I cannot offer vast influence in the halls of the US Senate. I cannot promise that I will bring home the pork because I believe that sow needs to be slaughtered. What I can and do promise is to be an unremitting advocate for a culture of life. What I can and do promise is to earnestly contend against the molestation of your wallets by those who would practice economic perversion in the way of increased taxation. I can and do promise to do all I can to starve the beast that has become the federal government. I can and do promise to do all I can to lift the burden that the State has put on the small business owner. I can and do promise to seek to end tax payer financed corporate welfare, international give-away programs, and United Nations financing. I can and do promise, pursuant to the 9th and 10th amendments, to try and return real governmental power and authority to the states. In short, I promise to take seriously the senatorial oath to support and defend the Constitution in its original intent.

In 1976, Gerald Ford, a citizen of Michigan, accepted the nomination of his party to be President with these words: “[Our Forefathers’] vision was of free men and free women enjoying limited Government and unlimited opportunity. The mandate I want in 1976 is to make this vision a reality.”

We are 229 years removed from their original vision and 29 years removed from President Ford’s speech, but the vision remains, and it comprises the heart of this Michigan citizen’s campaign for US Senate.

My prayer is that the voters of Michigan will do their part in making the vision reality.

American Minute cheerfully informed me today that:

Women can vote! That was the monumental news this day, August 26th, 1920, as the nineteenth amendment became law. It reads: “The right of citizens of the U.S. to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” This culminated fifty years effort by many of the women leaders who fought to abolish slavery, one of whom was Julia Ward Howe, author of The Battle Hymn of the Republic. She wrote in the third verse: “Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel, Since God is marching on.”

I’m afraid this is one woman who would not put an exclamation mark after that first sentence. Allowing women to vote did not contribute to their freedom, it destroyed covenantal protections by making them autonomous individuals apart from the biblical headship of husbands and fathers. It was a repudiation of the principle of representative government and allowed the heinous idea of democracy to continue to grow.

Betcha can’t guess who said the following:

It is not really surprising that this welfare state should breed a politics not of “justice” or “fairness” but of “compassion.,” which contemporary liberalism has elevated into the most important civic virtue. Women tend to be more sentimental, more risk-averse and less competetive than men—yes, it’s Mars vs. Venus—and therefore are less inclined to be appreciative of free-market economics, in which there are losers as well as winners. College-educated women—the kind who attend Democratic conventions— are also more “permissive” and less “judgmental” on such issues as homosexuality, capital punishment, even pornography.

Well, it was Irving Kristol, known as the godfather of neo-conservatism, in a 1996 Wall Street Journal article. Those women he says are found at the Democratic conventions are attending Republican functions in droves, as well. They like the cowboy swagger combined with the sensitivity of our “compassionate conservative” president. I seem to remember that giving Iraqi women voting rights was one of the reasons the neo-conservative empire building team has given as justification for American troops fighting and dying in Iraq.

Kristol’s quote is in a 75-page pdf titled Women’s Suffrage and The Size of Government by John Lott and Larry Kenny. In it they make the case that women’s suffrage has dramatically increased government entitlement spending. (Thanks to Vox Day for the link.)

About that Julia Ward quote in the message from American Minute, an effort ostensibly to educate people about the Christian roots of our nation and significant Christian contributions to history: Mrs. Ward was not a Christian. She repudiated her Calvinist beliefs when she embraced Unitarianism and Transcendentalism. Her song was not one of glory to the Trinitarian God, but a propaganda piece putting the state in the place of God as an instrument of vengeance. Christians need to be more discerning when embracing a cause because someone baptizes it with religious lingo. Satan was good at quoting Bible verses out of context, too.

For a biblical view of suffrage from a Christian woman, read Jennie Chancey’s article on the topic.

On Iran:
“As I say, all options are on the table. The use of force is the last option for any president.”

George W. Bush
Aug. 12, 2005

On Iraq:
“I will keep all options on the table…We want to resolve all issues peacefully.”

George W. Bush
Feb. 18, 2002

Quotes courtesy of The American Conservative

With his approval rating hovering around 40% and support for the Iraq war imploding, the president has emerged from his Crawford exile with a new and compelling rationale for the Iraqi excursion. Speaking of those who have given lives or limbs in Iraq and Afghanistan, Mr. Bush said, “We owe them something. We will finish the task that they gave their lives for. We will honor their sacrifice by staying on the offensive against the terrorists, and building strong allies in Afghanistan and Iraq that will help us … fight and win the war on terror.”

Methinks this is a curious argument. Since 2,000 plus Americans have died in the messianic crusades ludicrously called ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’ and ‘Operation Enduring Freedom,’ Mr. Bush says, why not send more young men into the fray? Does that make sense to anyone?

“So long as I’m the president, we will stay, we will fight, and we will win the war on terror,” Mr. Bush told National Guardsmen in Idaho. But what does it mean to “win the war on terror?” As Secretary Rumsfeld has said, “We lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror. Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?” Iraq has turned into a strategic and moral disaster of cosmic proportions, and despite neocon protestations to the contrary, Afghanistan is an ungovernable mess.

Meanwhile, on the left side of the political spectrum, the NY Times says that “the only rational argument for continuing the American presence in Iraq” is to ensure that Title IX is exported to Basra U and guarantee that men can get their beards shaved down at the local barbershop. Always nice to see the libs throw around warm-fuzzy “human rights” arguments as a rationalization for militarism. As Raimondo says, the Dems are just as bad as the GOP.

What other compelling post hoc justifications are emanating from deep within the bowels of the administration? “The stakes in Iraq could not be higher,” Bush added. “We will not allow the terrorists to establish new places of refuge in failed states from which they can recruit and train and plan new attacks on our citizens.” Blah, blah, blah. If we aren’t killing them in Basra, pretty soon they’ll be in Boston. I’m reminded of a scene in Peter Weir’s great movie ‘Gallipoli’ where Mark Lee explains to some codger in the Australian outback that if the Turks aren’t stopped at Gallipoli pretty soon they would be swarming all over Australia. The old men, looking around at the desolation of the Aussie backcountry responds, “They can have it.”

As I’ve written previously, this argument made by Bush and his neocon Svengali’s begins with the presumption that there are a finite number of potential terrorists that can be penned up in Iraq and dealt with accordingly. In fact, the pool of anti-American fighters has likely grown as a response to the invasion of Iraq.

The CIA admitted that the war in Iraq was a major recruiting device for Bin-Laden and his minions. A report published earlier this year states that, “Iraq…could provide recruitment, training grounds, technical skills and language proficiency for a new class of terrorists who are ‘professionalized’ and for whom political violence becomes an end in itself.”

In short, we have no definition of “winning,” and hence no strategy to secure “victory,” which has become little more than a vaporous abstraction employed by war supporters.

On Monday’s ‘700 Club,’ Pat Robertson said of Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez, “We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability. We don’t need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator. It’s a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with.”

Whatever one thinks of Robertson, and he has done some good, let’s admit from the get-go that the above remark was unwise, imprudent, and indecent coming from a purveyor of the Gospel.

However, who really cares what Pat Robertson says about foreign policy anyway? Is he dining on a regular basis with Condi Rice? And really, isn’t Robertson simply making a “lesser of two evils” defense–the standard Christian conservative argument for putting on the elephant suit and heading to the ballot box every four years to pull a lever for the GOP?

In a blog on the subject, Al Mohler said, “Pat Robertson bears responsibility to retract, rethink, repent, and restate his position on this issue. Otherwise, what could have been a temporary lapse of judgment can become an enduring obstacle to the Gospel. Mr. Robertson, it’s back in your court. Your Christian brothers and sisters must love you enough to tell you the truth — and encourage you to set the record straight.”

Mohler is an avid proponent of meddlesome American foreign policy in the Middle East and recently penned an essay defending the use of nukes in WWII. Defending the use of nukes, Mohler retreated to the lesser-of-two-evils argument and resorted to an essentially utilitarian line of reasoning when he said, “In the final analysis, there is good reason to believe that the deployment of the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki may well have saved more Japanese lives in the end, as well as the lives of unnumbered American soldiers and sailors.”

All Robertson was saying is that it is more prudent to simply kill one man rather than spending several hundred billion dollars to gin up a war. What’s wrong with that? If Mohler, Dobson, Colson, Kennedy, Bright, Neuhaus, Weigel, and all the rest can support an obviously unjust conflict, why can’t Robertson support short-circuiting the war machine with a few well-place bullets?

If it were up to me, the Iraqi imbroglio would have been resolved inside a steel cage with no-holds barred tag-team Texas Death match with Bush and Cheney vs. Hussein and Aziz. Heck, we could have even had a global pay-per-view event. Wouldn’t that have been better than what we have now?